That guy is an idiot! And a person who would be under him there is a moron. The sad part is that if one or both of them had been killed or required a rescue the news media would have called them climbers.

Sorry if y'all think I am callous about this. Personally I exercise extreme caution in situations where there is dangerous loose rock. Getting crushed or crushing a friend is not on my to do list.

Dingus, your story is compelling, and your friend being killed is very sobering. I have to say though that I cannot imagine you or your buddies approaching dangerous terrain like that with the yahoo attitude displayed in the video. That is why I reacted the way I did.

If it was Zion (DH suggested this possibility), the rock can get amazing loose very quickly, and as almost no one goes in the backcountry, few slopes are pruned of loose stuff. You grab what looks like a secure sandstone ledge, and suddenly it comes off in your hand, followed by a few hundred lbs of junk. I'm amazed that Zion reports just one rockfall fatality.

This crap happens, and often there is little warning.

The one death in our outdoor club occurred when a guy stopped to put on his poncho, and a block let loose above him and crushed him. No one was up above; it was just rotten luck, with a light rain lubricating the rocks. People started shouting "rock, rock!" but he probably just heard the rustling of the nylon.

The traditional scramble route up "Indecision Peak" in Red Rock is up a horrible sand-and-talus gully that is just waiting to let loose. I've knocked a baseball-sized rock loose, and it fell down knocking free successive larger blocks, till the final meter-sized block came to rest on the edge of a cliff.

A lot of Sierra peaks are covered with such marginally stable stuff, just waiting to break loose.